Navajo Generating Station

Navajo Generating Station is a 2250 megawatt coal-fired power plant located on the Navajo Indian Reservation near Page, Arizona.

The plant consists of three 750 MW units that provide power to Arizona, Nevada, and California. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power owns 21% of the power generated by the plant. The station has three 236 meter high chimneys, which are the tallest structures in Arizona. It was assembled during the 1970s and began producing commercial power in 1975. The construction costs were $650 million, with an additional $420 million for new environmental scrubbers.

The plant releases more than 19 million tons of carbon dioxide per year. In 2004, it was the nation’s fifth largest power plant emitter of carbon dioxide and eleventh largest emitter of nitrogen oxides.

The power plant is served by coal mined at the Kayenta Mine near Kayenta, Arizona and hauled by the Black Mesa and Lake Powell railroad. The Kayenta mine ships about 8 million tons of coal each year to the power plant, which uses up to 25,000 tons of coal per day when all units are fully running. Each year the plant also uses nearly 8 billion gallons of water from Lake Powell for cooling.

The Navajo Generating Station is located about 25 kilometers from the Grand Canyon National Park. In 1987, a National Park Service study demonstrated that the plant impacts the air quality at the park and contributes to the wintertime haze at the Grand Canyon. In 1991, as a result of years of litigation by environmental organizations and citizen activists, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency required a 90% reduction in sulfur dioxide emissions from the plant.

Plant Data

 * Owner: Salt River Project Agricultural Improvement & Power District
 * Parent Entity: State of Arizona
 * Plant Nameplate Capacity: 2,409 MW
 * Units and In-Service Dates: 803 MW (1974), 803 MW (1975), 803 MW (1976)
 * Location: Hwy. 98, Page, AZ 86040
 * GPS Coordinates: 36.903333, -111.390277
 * Coal Consumption:
 * Coal Source: Kayenta Mine
 * Number of Employees:

Emissions Data

 * 2006 CO2 Emissions: 20,071,581 tons
 * 2006 SO2 Emissions: 3,843 tons
 * 2006 SO2 Emissions per MWh:
 * 2006 NOx Emissions: 34,744 tons
 * 2005 Mercury Emissions: 273 lb.

Death and disease attributable to fine particle pollution from Navajo
In 2010, Abt Associates issued a study commissioned by the Clean Air Task Force, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization, quantifying the deaths and other health effects attributable to fine particle pollution from coal-fired power plants. Fine particle pollution consists of a complex mixture of soot, heavy metals, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides. Among these particles, the most dangerous are those less than 2.5 microns in diameter, which are so tiny that they can evade the lung's natural defenses, enter the bloodstream, and be transported to vital organs. Impacts are especially severe among the elderly, children, and those with respiratory disease. The study found that over 13,000 deaths and tens of thousands of cases of chronic bronchitis, acute bronchitis, asthma, congestive heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, dysrhythmia, ischemic heart disease, chronic lung disease, and pneumonia each year are attributable to fine particle pollution from U.S. coal plant emissions. These deaths and illnesses are major examples of coal's external costs, i.e. uncompensated harms inflicted upon the public at large. Low-income and minority populations are disproportionately impacted as well, due to the tendency of companies to avoid locating power plants upwind of affluent communities. To monetize the health impact of fine particle pollution from each coal plant, Abt assigned a value of $7,300,000 to each 2010 mortality, based on a range of government and private studies. Valuations of illnesses ranged from $52 for an asthma episode to $440,000 for a case of chronic bronchitis.

Table 1: Death and disease attributable to fine particle pollution from Navajo Generating Station
Source: "Find Your Risk from Power Plant Pollution," Clean Air Task Force interactive table, accessed March 2011

Plant Upgrades
Currently the Navajo Station is debating whether or not to install scrubbers to help reduce sulfur dioxide (SO2), a pollutant discharged from the burning of coal which is regulated by the U.S. EPA and can contribute to acid rain. Costs could reach $600,000 million to $1 billion to install these scrubbers at the Navajo Station.

The EPA has proposed the scrubbing system which uses ammonia to reduce SO2. The Salt River Project, Navajo's managing partner, says this could add about $13 million a year to the plant's operating budget and those expanses would be passed on to customers. The ammonia must be injected into the system after the coal is burned. To reach the plant, the chemical would be delivered to Flagstaff by railroad and then trucked to Page, where the only service is a direct rail line from the Kayenta coal mine that produces coal for the plant.

"It would be a very significant capital investment and challenging to do the work," said Glenn Reeves, SRP's manager of power generation. "We would have issues just getting approval from all the owners. There are a lot of uncertainties around coal plants right now."

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power holds a 21 percent interest in Navajo and under California law, faces strict rules about putting money in coal-fired plants and is currently deciding whether or not to walk away from Navajo if the expenses and risk of a future closure are too high.

The final decision will likely be made by the middle of 2010. The proposal is still open to public comment.

Grand Canyon Trust and the Sierra Club are pressuring owners of Navajo Generating Station through talks to clean their emissions, or close regardless of a cleanup effort.

Economic Study Supports Coal Plant Phase-Outs Over Retrofits
In March of 2010 Natural Capitalism Solutions, an environmental advocacy group based in Longmont, Colorado, released a report,"Coal Plants in Transition: An Economic Case Study", that favored phasing out existing coal plants over retrofitting them with scrubber technology. The report provided a “proof of concept” for utilities to consider as they evaluate investments in new generation capacity and upgrades to existing facilities.

“We are quickly entering a water- and carbon-constrained world, and we wanted to look at what options might be available to utility managers and other energy providers,” said Paul Sheldon, a senior consultant at Natural Capitalism Solutions and the report’s main author. “We believe that these findings represent a business approach for energy managers to consider as they are faced with difficult decisions regarding the future of their facilities. We’ve shown that this approach allows them to maintain reliability and still profit in their transition to 21st century energy technologies.”

Using the Navajo Generating Station near Page, Ariz. as a case study, the group's analysis examined the costs and benefits of the plant’s future. As with many aging power plants nationwide, Navajo is due for upgrades necessary for it to comply with the EPA's pollution and air quality regulations. The report notes that retrofits can entail substantial costs, running into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The report states that such facilities, in order to protect jobs and move in a more environmentally safe direction, will be more profitable by abandoning retrofit plans and instead embracing a full range of clean energy resources, including wind, photovoltaic and concentrated solar, geothermal, and biomass, combined with large-scale supply and demand-side efficiency measures.

In the report, Natural Capital Solutions examined the costs and benefits of the Navajo plant’s future: continue burning coal or transition to renewable energy. The authors note that, as with many aging power plants nationwide, Navajo is due for upgrades necessary for it to comply with pollution and air quality regulations, requiring retrofits that can entail substantial costs running hundreds of millions of dollars. The authors ran a number of iterations of their cost-benefit model, testing low, medium, and high market pricing for all of the variables, and calculated that when average or “medium” values were applied, the generating capacity from Navajo could reliably and profitably be replaced with an estimated revenue surplus of $157.6 million annually. Natural Capital Solutions developed an online calculator version of the model, which is available here.

LADWP 2010 Integrated Resource Plan
The 2010 Integrated Resource Plan of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LDWP), a strategic plan for the next 20 years, recommended that LADWP add 630 new megawatts of solar capacity by 2020 and 970 megawatts of solar capacity by 2030. The plan recommended 580 megawatts of new wind power by 2020. The plan designated that 40 percent of solar be in-basin. It recommended incentive programs, feed-in tariff schemes, and other mechanisms for promoting solar. The plan recommended ending purchases of power from the coal-fired Navajo Generating Station by 2014, which is five years ahead of the deadline established by California state law. The plan recommends ending use of power from the Intermountain Power Station by 2020, seven years ahead of the scheduled end of such purchases. The plan states that "LADWP is open to a mutually agreeable early compliance plan between the project participants that preserves the site and transmission for clean fossil and renewable generation."

Black Cross Movement targets Kayenta Mine
In November 2010 the Black Cross Movement planted symbolic black crosses in front of the Navajo Nation's Kayenta Mine in New Mexcio, which was named in the spring of 2010 as one of the most dangerous mines in the country.

Navajo ranked 8th in terms of largest carbon dioxide emissions
According to a 2009 report by Environment America, "America's Biggest Polluters," the Navajo Generating Station is the eighth dirtiest plant in the nation, releasing 20.1 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2007. Ranking is based upon Environmental Protection Agency data.

Congressional hearing focuses on Arizona coal plant closure
Leaders of three American Indian tribes said in a Congressional hearing on May 26, 2011 that closing a coal-fired power plant in northern Arizona would devastate their communities, leave hundreds without jobs and threaten water rights settlements.

Others that supported the closure spoke at the hearing on the role of Navajo Generating Station stating that the dire predictions are overblown. They urged Congress to transition the plant from coal to renewable energy to protect people's health and the environment.

Navajo Generating Station and the Kayenta Mine contribute about $140 million in revenue and wages to the Navajo Nation, while the Hopi Tribe receives $13 million for its coal and water. Some 1,000 people are employed at the plant and the coal mine, the majority being American Indians.

External Resources

 * Existing Electric Generating Units in the United States, 2005, Energy Information Administration, accessed Jan. 2009.
 * Environmental Integrity Project, "Dirty Kilowatts: America’s Most Polluting Power Plants", July 2007.
 * Facility Registry System, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, accessed Jan. 2009.
 * Salt River Project power company, operator of Navajo Generating Station

Related SourceWatch Articles

 * Arizona and coal
 * Black Mesa coal mine
 * Central Arizona Project
 * Coal and Native American tribal lands
 * Existing U.S. Coal Plants
 * Global warming
 * Salt River Project
 * United States and coal